“No time for cameras, we’ll use our eyes instead.”
          –Chiddy Bang, Peanut Butter & Swelly

Recently, my mom has become the queen of selfies. This development, while slightly bizarre, is not actually a result of my mother’s photogenic grin or youthful tech-savviness; I think it’s more an indication of a greater snapshot culture. We all present ourselves as grinning pixels, which are filtered and photoshopped and cloud-ed around. I’m as guilty as anyone. Tap to tag – Here’s you! This is me! Look! Look!

“Forget hashtags and retweets, a hundred and forty characters up in these streets.”
          –Jay-Z, Magna Carta (…radio edit)

The number 140 comes from the “character limit” of a Twitter post. Twitter assumes we have a tiny attention span – your ideas couldn’t possibly be bigger than 140 keyboard symbols. Awesomely, the word character has multiple meanings. For the record, I noticed this connection before Jay-Z ever talked about “characters in the streets,” but that’s the idea: if we regularly distill our thoughts into 140-character soundbites, surely I can recreate my 140-character life.

“There’s no one alive who is you-er than you.”
          –Dr. Seuss, Happy Birthday to You!

So based on this particular character (letter) limit, I chose some characters (people) in my life, then found a picture of each that I figured caught some part of their character (personality). In some weird, one-sided way, I felt like I got to hang out with each of these people for the 20-whatever minutes I spent drawing them. What a creep.

“You make beautiful things out of dust. You make beautiful things out of us.”
          –Gungor, Beautiful Things

I think the internet underestimates our attention span. For this project, I tried to choose quick moments and otherwise throwaway snapshots. Each drawing is completely and unapologetically just one person for one moment, and that is nevertheless worth my time. These are people that I know, and they are worth my time.
Of course, I then scanned and uploaded all the drawings, so here we are. I have created the world’s most analog snapchat. Smh.